The question was: "Am I right in saying the University of Bologna is now in possession of an E-Cat and is doing tests to understand the physics behind how the device works?"
Loris Ferrari wrote:I am glad to answer to your kind message. First of all, the title of my article is ironic: "foolish energy", in every-day Italian, means also "a lot of energy". I think that this double meaning was not clear to the translator. Second: the sentence you report in your message should be corrected as follows: "... we have moved from Event to Fact, from "they say" to "it's measured" ..." Third and more importantly, the Department of Physics of Bologna and dr Andrea Rossi are going to sign a contract according to which the people indicated in my article will be allowed to make any "external" measurements on the E-cat, without access to the internal content, in order to certify the emitted power exactly, the radiation (if any) and any other possible feature of interest. The people indicated will be free to publish their results, except those interfering with industrial secretness. For example, should we find that the emitted power is an illusion, or much less than claimed, we will be free to publish. In a sense, we will be forced, since the Department of Physics has explicitly required a periodical report on the state of the art of the experiments. So, what you suppose in the conclusive sentence of your message is not still effective, but is incoming in few days, presumably. Thanks for your attention and interest
Looks like there is some hope that the UoB will do some useful testing and that we will hear about it in some detail. It will be interesting to see what Giorgio can find out from his sources next week.
This suggests that there will be scientific measurements of a "black box". Well, its a start!
If y'all have connections with these folks, I would strongly advise that they try to get multiple copies of the unit and run them side by side with different inputs. The suggested tests were mentioned in one of my ealier posts. (First, with and without H).
The FIRST THING is to plum it into a closed system of water so it is clear what the quantity of water being heated is. Why this is not done is absolutely and totally nuts. You buy a domestic pump and a tank, and away we go with something remotely resembling 'repeatable'.
Then, run one of these damned things WITHOUT HYDROGEN. This'll be a giveaway. To fail to do so is just flat out unscientific. It should be possible to run it and see either no power, or the power drop away exponentially (if it has previously had a load of hydrogen), then on admission of hydrogen it goes up again. If it doesn't do this, then nothing is even happening with the hydrogen!
The FIRST THING is to plum it into a closed system of water so it is clear what the quantity of water being heated is. Why this is not done is absolutely and totally nuts. You buy a domestic pump and a tank, and away we go with something remotely resembling 'repeatable'.
The 18 hour test used 1 liter/second. What you suggest would give a variable input temperature making it harder to calculate the heat flow.
Why bother anyway? I thought you were certain it didn't work and wanted to close the blog 50 pages ago.
There is little wrong with using a flow meter from the mains if the heat generated is anything like what has been reported.
parallel wrote:The 18 hour test used 1 liter/second.
I consider that to be very unlikely. Turning 1 litre of water per second into steam?! Wherever it was vented, it'd look like a power station chimney, and the noise of the thing just in displacing that much vapour down a pipe would be intolerable to stand next to it!
The most reasonable explanation is that once this one litre per second feed was attached to the device, the flow rate dropped to a much smaller fraction of this 'calculated' amount.
Like I said much earlier, a public test is simple. Devise a fully enclosed device with an internal heat exchanger to an external heat sink, and submerge it in a public outdoor swimming pool. It'll be obvious if it is giving off the heat outputs claimed.
parallel wrote:The 18 hour test used 1 liter/second.
I consider that to be very unlikely. Turning 1 litre of water per second into steam?! Wherever it was vented, it'd look like a power station chimney, and the noise of the thing just in displacing that much vapour down a pipe would be intolerable to stand next to it!
The most reasonable explanation is that once this one litre per second feed was attached to the device, the flow rate dropped to a much smaller fraction of this 'calculated' amount.
Like I said much earlier, a public test is simple. Devise a fully enclosed device with an internal heat exchanger to an external heat sink, and submerge it in a public outdoor swimming pool. It'll be obvious if it is giving off the heat outputs claimed.
As I recall, the 18 hour test did not produce steam by design; only a temperature differential. This was in response to some of the criticisms the earlier tests vis-a-vis the difficulty of measurement of dry steam, etc.
As I recall, the 18 hour test did not produce steam by design; only a temperature differential. This was in response to some of the criticisms the earlier tests vis-a-vis the difficulty of measurement of dry steam, etc.
I recall this too. My critizism about that test was though that the imput water temperature was only slightly below room temperature at IIRC 18 degrees C and assuming 21 degrees C to be our "standard" room temperature" and IIRC the exiting water was only heated to 24 degrees C, which is IMHO just slightly above our assumed standard room temperature. If the room was to be slightly warmer than the 21 C (some people heat their places to 24 degrees C, which is on the upper end of what most people consider comfortable) and depending on the experimental setup, the calculated output heat could not be fully trusted.
Yes, the 1lt/sec was having a very small DeltaT. I posted all the calculations somewhere 100 pages ago, more or less.
Friday next I'll probably know more about the contract details.
Giorgio wrote:Yes, the 1lt/sec was having a very small DeltaT. I posted all the calculations somewhere 100 pages ago, more or less.
Friday next I'll probably know more about the contract details.
I remember this now. It was remarkably unconvining because the output temperature was near to ambient, and temperature differential small...
EDIT -OK 40C higher than ambient. Just. If thermometer accurate. But cal erors between In/out thermometers...
Seems difficult for them to get a test which proves anything!
Last edited by tomclarke on Sat Jun 11, 2011 8:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Giorgio wrote:Yes, the 1lt/sec was having a very small DeltaT. I posted all the calculations somewhere 100 pages ago, more or less.
Friday next I'll probably know more about the contract details.
I remember this now. It was remarkably unconvining because the output temperature was (probably) well below ambient, and temperature differential small...
For example, the thermometer measuring output temp could have thermal leak to ambient, bad theremal contact with output fluid, etc. And of course there will be ambient heat added to the system, though this is less likely a problem.
Seems difficult for them to get a test which proves anything!
Yes, that was my exact same feeling.
Going from a "steam" test to a test with an high water flow and a ridicule DeltaT does not really help people to take them seriously.
Rothwell's report gives the details to refute the arguments above. Remember the temp soared 40C at one point. Obviously it is not difficult to measure 5C with reasonable accuracy. What difference would even an error of 1 C make to the overall experiment?
Jed Rothwell
Tue, 22 Feb 2011 07:10:12 -0800
A source close to the recent 18-hour test of the Rossi device gave me the
following figures. These are approximations.
Flow rate: 3,000 L/h = 833 ml/s.
Input temperature: 15°C
Output temperature ~20°C
Input power from control electronics: variable, average 80 W, closer to 20 W
for 6 hours
Notes from Jed
5°C temperature difference * 833 ml = 4,165 cal/s = 17,493 W
3,000 L/h seems like a lot but it is 793 gallons/h, which is how much a
medium-sized $120 ornamental pond pump produces. Peter & I think it would
have been better to throttle back the flow rate somewhat.
15°C is probably tap water temperature.
A 5°C temperature difference can easily be measured with confidence.
The control electronics input of ~80 W is in line with what was reported for
tests before Jan. 14. Input was high on that day because something went
wrong with the controls, with "cracked welding" as described in the Levi
report.
I consider that to be very unlikely. Turning 1 litre of water per second into steam?! Wherever it was vented, it'd look like a power station chimney, and the noise of the thing just in displacing that much vapour down a pipe would be intolerable to stand next to it!
parallel wrote:Rothwell's report gives the details to refute the arguments above.
Rothwell didn't make any report of the experiment, he merely "reported" info that "A source close to the recent 18-hour test of the Rossi device" gave to him. It proves nothing nor add any additional credibility to the claims.
parallel wrote:Remember the temp soared to 40C at one point.
I remember not, nor can you or anyone else in this board, as it was a closed door experiment with no divulged data. It could as well all be hearsay for what we know.
parallel wrote:Obviously it is not difficult to measure 5C with reasonable accuracy. What difference would even an error of 1 C make to the overall experiment?
While that could be true, the main issue you are not considering is the high water flow. There was no measuring apparatus on the water inlet or outlet.
The water flow was estimated by measuring main line pressure before running the experiment.
Any civil engineer could explain how water pressure can vary hugely from one minute to the other. Hence the real water flow is unknown and you cannot estimate anything that has a scientific validity out of this "experiment".
There were several write ups. Perhaps you will like NyTeknik's better.
“It was pretty impressive in some respects. First, the repeatability. This is the third time I’ve seen the device, and again it produces energy.”
“The second thing is that this time we loaded the unit with hydrogen at the beginning, and then the bottle was closed. It then worked for 18 hours with the bottle closed. Quite impressive.”
“I weighed container before and after charging, and including the gas we let out to empty the tube of air, the consumption of hydrogen was 0.4 grams. That’s nothing!”
“Minimum power was 15 kilowatts, and that’s a conservative value. I calculated it several times. At night we did a measurement and the device then worked very stable and produced 20 kilowatts.”
“Now that I have seen the device work for so many hours, in my view all chemical energy sources are excluded,” said Giuseppe Levi.
snip
Initially, the temperature of the inflowing water was seven degrees Celsius and for a while the outlet temperature was 40 degrees Celsius. A flow rate of about one liter per second, equates to a peak power of 130 kilowatts. The power output was later stabilized at 15 to 20 kilowatts.
Levi explained that they did not have a peristaltic pump with sufficient flow, so instead the device was attached directly to the water tap. Therefore the flow was not constant, but by regularly noting the time and reading the input volume on a counter, he controlled the flow.
At night the counter information was recorded with a camera.
